Hi! It's Stephanie. I want to write a small excerpt here before we get to the meat and potatoes of this blog post. Emily and myself are still together. Don't worry! But in any friendship (and especially buisness venture) you're gonna have crossroads. How you deal with them is EVERYTHING. Emily and I have pride ourselves on being able to communicate how we feel on this journey with one another. Her and I have grown into two different human beings. I am single and finally spreading my wings in doing the things that light me up. She is married and talking about children. This has caused us to have VERY different views on life. But our core values are the same.
What you are about to read is the letter that I wrote to Emily during our most recent "tiff." Unbeknownst to me, she had also written her own letter. If you look back at the last blog post, that was her "love letter" to me in explaining her feelings. If you compare the two, you will see that we both had similar things to say...just on the opposite side of the coin.
Emily and I always pride ourselves on being very open on this platform to show that perfection really doesn't exist. So hopefully in reading this, you will see that it is possible to have healthy disagreements and communicate to cultivate a better relationship for you and your partner.
After all...we really aren't so different. She's the girl on the other side of the mirror. And I love her muchly. 🌹
STEPHANIE'S LETTER:
Between this and the other day when you were talking about the boudoir pictures I took, I’ve been feeling a bit Judged.
I know all of these things come from a place of love and wanting to protect the people you love, and wanting the best for them. But sometimes I feel like you look down on the choices that I make in my life that genuinely bring me happiness and that makes me feel sad.
I’ve worked extremely hard to love myself the way I am currently. I celebrate how hard I take care of my body and how hard I work in general. So when I hear you say that you feel sorry for women who wear too much makeup or dress more provocatively, or present themselves in a certain way, it hurts my feelings. As a women who does most of those things, I feel like I am looked down on as less than. And what makes it hurt beyond all that is that it’s my best friend.
I love you. I would NEVER put you or your family in harms way. I try to be sensitive to your anxiety in a way that hopefully isn’t making it worse.
I know we are two very different sides of the coin. I’m attempting to figure out what little Stephanie needs. Helping her to not feel so guilty for wanting to express her self spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and sexually. You are married and talking about children. We have started to grow in wildly different directions. But love is work. So I’m willing to have really shitty tough conversations so I we don’t burst into flames.
I have this tendency to add more to my plate than I should (my own form of taking control of my anxiety) and you have a tendency to people please and take on your own form of too much. You love so intensely (because you don’t want to see the humans you love get hurt) that it comes off like you think you’re better than or need to save them. Again…ALSO a form of taking control of anxiety.
I know we don’t have the answers on how to make this work perfectly. But perfect doesn’t exist. And I would never want it to. Too stressful to keep up with.
I guess I’m a nutshell what I’m trying to say is this…
You can trust me. In life and in business. I heard you. Really heard you when we had the talk after you came back from tour. I feel since our last convo, I have shown you this. I also need you to respect the choices I make for my body and myself. You don’t have to agree. But you don’t have to save me or defend me from myself. I’m no longer that girl that is afraid of breathing. I welcome the air. I also trust MYSELF to do what’s right for me. I was not able to do that even the beginning of this year. Basically, I’ve started to love myself enough to know how to parent me.
I know these conversations are not always easy, but YOU are worth it. You always will be. You are so much more than just a friend, sister, and business partner. You are part of me now. A soul mate. And you know how we both feel about those.
I’ll end this with, I love you. I see you. I hear you. I want the best for you. And I would like for the same to be given to me in return.
THE END.
Catch ya on the next blog ✨
Your Cycle Half,
Stephanie